


Happy Pawnee Christmas

by angelheadedhipster



Category: Parks and Recreation
Genre: F/M, LOVE YOU BABY, M/M, Reminiscing, also a thing i like:, and steph, ben wyatt - Freeform, boys in hotel rooms, but more, friends - Freeform, this is a thing i like, who are friends, wistfullness
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2014-01-22
Updated: 2014-01-22
Packaged: 2018-01-09 14:45:54
Rating: Explicit
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,720
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/1147238
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/angelheadedhipster/pseuds/angelheadedhipster
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Alone and aimless, Ben ends up at Chris's house. Things are the way they used to be, and aren't.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Happy Pawnee Christmas

**Author's Note:**

  * For [hi_irashay](https://archiveofourown.org/users/hi_irashay/gifts).



> Takes place some time in early season 4, after Leslie and Ben break up because she is running for city council. Some time around the “treat yo self” episode.
> 
> Written for my beloved hi_irashay, who I, really and truly, could not live without. Happy Snowflake, darling!

He’d been walking aimlessly for so long that his hands were numb, and he hadn’t even realized. Ben looked up at the folksy holiday decorations: hand-painted smiling Santas, cutesy elves, blinking icicles.

“Shut up,” he said.

He was near Chris’s condo, actually, that was how far he’d walked. It was getting too cold to stand still, so he kept walking. He walked to Chris’s door - just to have something to do, he told himself. Somewhere to go to escape the lightly frosted red and green lights.

He wouldn’t go in, for sure. He was way too mad at Chris. Really mad. Gut-punchingly mad, like he had never been before. This was all Chris’s fault. Chris was why he was in Pawnee in the first place, Chris was why he had stayed. And then Chris was the one who said that he and Leslie couldn’t be together, that it wasn’t allowed, and Chris who would get them in trouble, who would cause the scandal, make them lose their jobs. Chris with his rules and his propriety. Everything was a rule with him. He’d followed Chris here, to this stupid little town, and now he was stuck, and he couldn’t have what he wanted, and there were cheery little reindeer everywhere, and he hated it.

There weren’t cheery little reindeer at Chris’s house. Chris had a whole tree outside his front door, and another one inside, he was sure. Tasteful red and green and gold tinsel twinkled at him, while a star on the tree’s tip quietly reminded him of the goodness at the heart of man. Chris.

He stood in front of Chris’s door for a full ten minutes, his hands stuffed in his coat. He was going to leave. He was about to leave, walk back to Andy and April’s, or somewhere else, maybe JJ’s - no, Leslie would be at JJ’s - maybe the park, or home, or maybe -

The door opened.

“Ben Wyatt!” said Chris, that perpetual grin on his perfect face. “I just made, literally, the best kale smoothies, ever. Would you like one?”

“What? No,” said Ben, before he’d really processed anything. “Wait. How did you know I was standing at the door? Did you just guess that I would be?” That used to happen sometimes, before Pawnee, when it was just the two of them on the road throughout middle America. One of them would open the door before the other knocked, or they would run into each other in hallways and elevators, headed to the same place without having discussed it. They were together, just the two of them, for so long that they knew what to expect, their lives in sync.

“No, I saw you through the window next to the door,” said Chris. He turned to his left, and gestured. “Here, see?”

Chris turned back to him and grinned, white teeth almost blinding in his face. “You should come in. It is _literally_ freezing outside.”

Ben opened his mouth to say no and instead said, “Yeah, sure,” and was stepping inside and throwing his coat off before he’d even realized it. He tried to throw it on the floor, because he knew it would piss Chris off, but he couldn’t, of course, and hung it nicely on the coatrack. Because that’s who he was, annoyingly enough.

Chris had sprinted off to the kitchen and was now bouncing on the balls of his feet as he fiddled with the blender. He was wearing what Ben recognized as a “Chris at home” outfit, tight track pants and some sort of super-wicking poly blend shirt, probably with a weight belt and heart monitor underneath it. Ben scowled. Stupid Chris and his stupid poly blends.

“So that’s a no on the smoothie, Ben? Are you absolutely sure? They are _incredibly_ high in iron, fiber, oxalates, _and_ magnesium!” Chris punctuated the last word with another excited grin and a thumbs up.

“Uh, how about coffee?” said Ben, trudging into the kitchen. Chris’s apartment was so _shiny_ , all wood floors and exposed staircases. Garlands of red and green lights twirled down the railings and across the mantel, and yep, there was another tree inside, even bigger than the one in the front, this one with gorgeous shiny ornaments all over it in pleasing color combinations. There wasn’t a shag carpet or dog hair anywhere.

Chris made a little frowning face, his eyebrows coming together and his lips pursing. When Chris Traeger did that, you could see every muscle in his face that made up a lip purse, carefully defined. “I don’t know that I have coffee. Would a rooibos tea blend be a good substitute? Or perhaps a glass of kombucha, I have -”

Ben held his hands up. “Just a glass of water is fine. Thanks.”

They sat on the couch, Chris delightedly holding his smoothie and Ben desultorily sipping his water and ignoring the radish chips that Chris swore he’d love and were _exceptionally_ high in potassium.

“So, Ben Wyatt, what brings you here?”

Ben sipped water and didn’t meet his eyes. “I don’t know, really. I was just...walking around, I guess. And I ended up here.”

Chris cocked his head to the side slightly. It made the tendons on the side of his neck stand out. “Walking around? In the cold? It’s December.”

“Yeah, I… I’ve been sort of restless, lately, I guess.”

“I see,” said Chris, and there was a pause. “Have you tried upping your cardio? I find that usually burns off any extra energy I have, and you can balance it out with extra strength workouts on your off days. In fact-”

“No it’s,” Ben cut him off before he could really get going, glancing sideways, meeting Chris’s eyes for the first time since they sat down. His really, incredibly blue eyes. “It’s not that kind of restless.”

“Oh,” said Chris, and there was another silence between them, a heavier one. One that said all the things they didn’t need to say, about Leslie and their jobs and Ben’s life and why Ben was really walking around Pawnee in the freezing cold. Chris knew. He didn’t say anything.

“This is backwards,” said Ben, putting his water glass down on the table, turning to face Chris on the sofa. “It’s supposed to be, you are the one who wants everyone to have fun, and I’m the one who makes the shitty decisions that have to be made, and makes everybody follow the stupid rules.”

Chris’s eyes were big in his face, and he was looking at Ben with one of his most earnest expressions. “I don’t want to be hurting you,” he said, and he scooted closer to him, the force of how much he cared vibrating through all those long lean muscles. “But I have to, Ben. You know that.”

“Yeah,” said Ben, and now he was staring back at Chris and biting his lip, trying to decide if he should say anything about how mad he was, or if he was mad at all. He didn’t feel mad, now, exactly. Something in the air changed, was changing. Chris’s face was so close to his, he could see every inch of perfect skin, tan and soft and supple.

And then Chris leaned forward the last few inches between them and Ben leaned in and they were kissing, bumping teeth as they both moved too fast, a small laugh escaping his lips as they angled around each other, finding a rhythm, tongues and lips moving together. It wasn’t the first time they’d kissed, or the fifth or the tenth or the fiftieth, probably. They used to do this, pretty often, back then. Before Pawnee. Chris knew him like no one else did.

Chris pulled back a little, his eyes skating over Ben’s face, checking his reaction. The corner of his mouth curled up. Ben was smiling back now, a tingling in his limbs, a feeling of anticipation in his stomach.

“Sorry,” Chris said. “You did The Lip Thing. That lip thing, as you know, is _literally_ the facial motion I find the _most_ irresistible, and-”

“Shut up, Chris,” said Ben, and grabbed his shoulders, pushing him down on the couch and covering him, grabbing his lips in another bruising kiss and stretching out until every part of their bodies were touching, sinking into something that was utterly familiar.

They had been together a long time. ‘Together.’ Travelling together, staying in weird hotel rooms and nice ones, even people’s houses sometimes. They balanced each other. It was nice. They were a good team.

They were still a good team, even now. Ben traced the muscles of Chris’s stomach, cold fingers on warm skin, smooth flat planes and the dimples below Chris’s pelvis revealing themselves as Chris took his shirt off over his head. Ben grinned and laughed, amazed at how quickly Chris understood, and then he was pulling Chris's pants off, dropping little quick kisses down his stomach, biting at the lines of his hipbones. Chris’s body was unreal, a joke, and the only way to deal with it was to dive right in and act like you belonged there.

Which is what he’d done, back then, before Pawnee. He couldn’t remember how it started, even, which one of them had made the first decision. It had just seemed obvious, at the time, and it still did. They did it every once in a while, showing up at each others rooms, once a week, maybe more when it was cold or they were especially bored. They never, ever talked about it. It was just… they were a team. They did what they did, they were good at it. They worked together.

Chris had gotten him naked now, and was on his lap with his long legs around him, sloppily making out, their hands on each other, fast and clumsy. Chris was trailing a hand down his chest, his stomach, grabbing his cock and making Ben gasp into the other’s mouth, hot and sudden. It had been awhile since he’d had sex with a man, but he remembered what to do. Chris took sex, like most things in his life, as a personal challenge. He excelled at personal challenges.

Ben had wanted this, needed this. Needed to lose himself in something, let go, go back to what he knew. If he was being perfectly honest with himself, this was probably why he’d shown up at Chris’s door, what he’d known would happen. Maybe even before he’d gotten to Chris’s, before he even left the house this morning. Maybe. He focused on sensations and the darkness behind his eyes, the feel of tongue and lips on his skin, the gathering tension in his thighs and toes. Chris’s hand on his dick was moving faster now, and Ben pulled out of the kiss long enough to lick his own hand, Chris’s eyes widening as he followed the motion. The second his lips were free - and he was careful to put a little extra flourish on sucking his fingers - Chris was kissing him again, fiercer and harder now. Ben reached out blindly with his now-slick hand, finding Chris’s cock. Chris moaned in response and Ben could hear it and feel it, vibrating through his chest and teeth.

Chris’s skin was sweaty and smooth now, sliding against Ben’s own slick skin as the other man moved even closer, wrapping his legs around Ben and pulling him towards him. Ben broke the kiss to trail little nips down Chris’s neck, feeling a rush of nostalgia at finding that the same spots were still sensitive - right under his ear, the hollow of his throat, his collarbone. Things were getting fuzzy and messy now, fingers sliding and missing, concentration broken, and Ben let go. Let himself stop thinking, stop analyzing, and just felt, skin and heat and pressure and little breathy noises, building pressure behind his eyes and Chris’s lips on his, wet and fast. It built until there was a gasp and groan from Chris as he came. Ben was right behind, biting his lips and watching it wash over him, feeling sort of like he was outside of his body, observing himself come from a distance.

They both fell sideways, Chris sliding off the couch onto the carpet on the floor, almost dragging Ben with him. There was some vague shuffling as the aftershocks twitched through them, finally ending with Ben on his back on the couch, staring up at the ceiling, and Chris sitting on the floor naked below him, his head leaning back onto Ben’s leg. Chris’s hair tickled, with all of it’s volume and carefully coiffed shine. Ben reached out a hand and Chris found his, instinct, intertwining their fingers, just for a minute. Meeting in the middle, as always.

They breathed in the silence for a few minutes, enjoying the peace and warmth that came with an orgasm. And, Ben thought, with doing something so familiar you didn’t even have to think about it. A song was running through his head, his toes tapping in rhythm, and it took him a few seconds to realize it was “All I Want for Christmas is You.”

“Do you remember that Christmas in South Bend?” he asked.

“Oh, yeah,” said Chris. His head moved against Ben’s leg as he talked, and now he looked up at the ceiling and laughed. “It was _horrible_.”

“We drank the whole minibar,” said Ben.

“And played Athzhilar for way too many hours,” said Chris. Athzhilar was an incredibly complicated game Ben had made up that involved playing cards, dice, a dictionary, calisthenics, blow jobs, and repeated chanting. The more they’d drank that night, the more it turned into competitive oral sex with occasional bouts of push-ups in between, all while holding the Queen of Hearts in one hand.

“Way too many,” said Ben, but he was laughing, remembering it. The hotel had played the same five Christmas songs the whole six weeks they were there, and there was one very sad stocking hung by the front door that got progressively moldier. It was possibly the most depressing December he’d ever had, and that was before they’d had to fire most of South Bend’s sanitation workers. Christmas itself was a hazy memory of too-sweet alcohol and Chris’s face, sweaty and laughing above him.

They got quiet, remembering South Bend, and then Davenport and Dubuque and Cedar Falls and all the others. One long string of hotel rooms and sloppy drunken kisses and spreadsheets in board rooms.

“That’s not us, anymore,” said Ben, breaking the silence. The sweat was cooling on his skin, and his back was starting to hurt on the couch.

“I know that,” said Chris. He turned around now, folding his legs and facing Ben, sitting cross-legged looking up at the couch. Chris had no shame whatsoever about sitting around naked, and why should he, really? “I’ve known that for awhile.”

Ben sat up now, too, more self-consciously than Chris. Their hands had come apart at some point, and now he had to look down to see Chris. He crossed his legs, too, just for something to do, and put his head in his hands.

“I miss you,” he said, and was surprised as he said it, and then not surprised. “Or, I miss then. I miss you and me, together, being good at something. We knew what we were doing then.”

Chris’s head was cocked, slightly to the side. “We did,” he said. “It was easy.”

“Mostly,” said Ben, but he was nodding. “This life here… I miss knowing. I miss that, that feeling of knowing what you have and what you want. Sometimes I don't know what I want.”

“I’m sorry you can’t be with Leslie Knope,” said Chris.

Ben tensed up in response, and looked down at Chris’s face. His eyes were so blue, and his hair was still stuck to his forehead. At the same moment that Ben started to stand up, Chris did too, and they were kissing again, slower this time. Slower and sadder, Ben thought.

“I should go,” Ben said as their faces parted, Chris’s lashes against his skin.

“If you have to,” said Chris, but he wasn’t fighting him. He stepped back, and grinned, suddenly.

“What,” said Ben, his nose crinkling.

“Happy Pawnee Christmas, Ben Wyatt.”


End file.
